Global Urban Monitoring 4.0 – Joint Use of Big Earth Data, Artificial Intelligence and Open Knowledge

Kurzfassung

The digital transformation taking place in all areas of life has led to a massive increase in digital data – in particular, related to the places where and the ways how we live. To facilitate an effective exploration of the new opportunities arising from this “digital revolution” with respect to urban monitoring, the Urban Thematic Exploitation Platform (U-TEP) has been set-up. This enabling instrument represents a virtual environment that combines open access to multisource data repositories – in particular related to Earth Observation (EO) - with dedicated data processing, analysis and visualization functionalities. Moreover, it includes various mechanisms for the development and sharing of technology and knowledge. A key data collection soon being provided at the U-TEP is the World Settlement Footprint (WSF) product suite generated by the German Aerospace Center (DLR). The suite includes the WSF2015 which is a 10m resolution binary raster mask derived by jointly exploiting multitemporal optical and radar satellite imagery. The WSF2015 shows the worldwide location and distribution of human settlements. An extended version – the WSF Imperviousness/Greenness - provides additional information about the percent impervious surface (or as an inverse, the vegetation fraction) within the built-up area. To characterize the urbanization dynamics in the last three decades, the WSF Evolution is currently under production. This so far unprecedented dataset outlines the spatiotemporal development of human settlements extent globally at 30m spatial resolution on a yearly basis from 1985 to 2015.